Technical Park of Astrakhan State University – Engine of Regional Innovative Development
The Technical Park of Astrakhan State University was founded in 2005. Nowadays it houses:
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The Regional Center of Nanotechnologies;
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Research Laboratories that have been set up jointly with the Russian Academy of Sciences;
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Research-oriented small business enterprises; they are financed by Russian federal granting programs.
Approximately 500, 000 USD have been spent to reconstruct the Technical Park, whose total area is 2, 000 sq. m. Now it has unique research equipment both of Russian and foreign origin.
Astrakhan State University regards the development of its Technical Part as a top priority task. That is why it actively cooperates with the Federal Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE). By now, 30 innovative projects of ASU’s faculty staff and students have been given a financial support from the FASIE. 15 innovative enterprises have been set up at ASU; some of them are located in its Technical Park.
Top Priority Research Activities of ASU’s Technical Park
1. Nanotechnologies and application of their products in Medicine, in the pharmaceutical industry, and in agriculture.
The core of the Technical Park is the Regional Center of Nanotechnologies & Nanoindustry. It was set up in accordance with the Decree of the Astrakhan Regional Government. The Center makes it possible for a number of researchers to use unique equipment:
- a tunnel scanning microscope;
- a plant for the vertical growing of nanotubes manufactured by the ULVAC Company (Japan);
- a plant to obtain metal-carbon nanocomposites;
- a transmission electron microscope;
- two educational nanotechnological complexes.
Astrakhan State University has its own united team of scholars who have gained experience in researching thin films, soot, and clusters. Jointly with the Institution of Solid-State Physics (affiliate of the Russian Academy of Sciences), we have set up a Research Laboratory, which actively cooperates with a number of Russia’s top research organizations – including Lomonosov Moscow State University. The top priority task of the Center is organizing technological lines to obtain and to research nanopowder materials and carbon nanotubes, as well as researching their application to regulate vital activities of biological systems and the development of nanoproducts for agriculture and for the fish industry.
Those researches have been supported with two federal grants provided by:
- the Federal Ministry of Education & Science (to support researches undertaken by ASU’s Full Professor Vladimir Karpasuyk and his team);
- the Start-2006 Federal Granting Program (to support researches of cosmetic nanoproducts that are based on mud from Lake Tinaki, which is undertaken by ASU’s Full Professor Elena Kondratenko and her team).
2. Researches that concern cryopreservation of genetic material of valuable flora and fauna from the Volga-Caspian Basin. Those researches are critical technologies of the federal level – the Technology of Bioengineering. We are currently working to preserve the genetic fund of rare and vanishing species of animals and plants (they have been included into Russia’s Red Book) in cryobanks or a man-made environment. The results of our researches – cryoproducts – are planned to be used at South Russia’s fish-breeding enterprises, on farms, and in reserves.
To project a cryobank of valuable fish species, our research team has been granted with the Federal Program “Start – 2006”.
3. Research Center of Ecological Farming “Asteko”; Experimental Agricultural Complex of Ecological Farming.
This direction of our activities includes the development of up-to-date agricultural technologies to manufacture and to develop ecologically pure cattle-breeding and plant-breeding products. The researches are undertaken jointly with the Regional Ministry of Agriculture; they have been supported with a grant from the Federal Ministry of Education & Science.
